Inspired by James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, I have adopted a new identity: I am HEALTHY AND FIT. Now I am accumulating small victories to reinforce my new identity. To accumulate these victories, I am slowly adopting new habits. For my first new habit, I am drinking 100 ounces of water every day.

I have known for months that I needed to drink more water, less soda. Conventional wisdom dictates drinking 64 ounces of water every day, but I have read in a lot of places that a person should actually drink (at least) half their body weight in ounces of water. I currently weight 201 pounds, so I’m aiming for 100 ounces of water.

To track my water, I whipped up a simple chart in my Bullet Journal. It’s not pretty, but it gets the job done.

Each water droplet represents 10 ounces. It seems so simple, but I love filling in the water droplets as I drink my water. I love to see my progress throughout the day. It motivates me to start drinking my water as early as possible, instead of loading up on soda and coffee in the morning and early afternoon (hello, caffeine!) and only getting a little water at day’s end.

As you can see, I drank 100 ounces of water seven days in a row. Woot woot! I “only” drank 80 ounces of water on July 24, but hey, I’m human. Mistakes are not disasters. They are learning opportunities!

Also, I love seeing the streak grow on my chart, but I’m glad my first streak broke after seven days. If I had managed to keep my first streak going for months, and then broke the streak, that could have been demoralizing. (I’m a recovering perfectionist, and yes, things like “broken water streaks” can seem demoralizing if I don’t watch my mindset.)

I know the current streak will get broken sooner or later. Maybe I won’t get enough water during a ride trip because I have to manage my bladder. Maybe I won’t get enough water when I have a stomach bug and need to drink Gatorade and Ginger Ale. And maybe I won’t get enough water someday because damnit, I’m just not in the mood for water. But that’s okay!

I think I would eventually like to create a binder to track all my health habits, but for now, the Bullet Journal is fun and easy. In fact, I might do my daily tracking in the Bullet Journal and then transfer the information to a binder for long-term tracking. Who knows? I am on a journey to be healthy and fit. I do not want to get overwhelmed by trying to do too much in the beginning. After all, being healthy and fit is my new long-term, until-the-day-I-die identity.

In case you missed my last few posts, Atomic Habits by James Clear has become my bible of sorts. In this post, I apply one of the lessons from the end of the book to my life and the changes I am making to be a healthy and fit bad ass. Without further ado, here is the post:

Toward the end of Atomic Habits, author James Clear mentions taking a mid-year review of his habits. I love this idea! Through my journaling, I have learned that the two most important things I can do for my well-being are (1) paying attention and (2) staying curious. I mostly do this with daily journaling, but a semi-annual review of my habits will help me pay attention and stay curious in a new and fun way.

Last week, I started to roll out the good habits that will help me build my new identity as a healthy and fit person. First, I started tracking my water, with a daily goal of drinking at least 100 ounces of water. After a few days of tracking my water intake (my skin already fees smoother), I felt inspired to track my veggies. I don’t eat nearly enough vegetables so this is my way of getting into the habit of eating my greens (and oranges).

I’ll review those habits at the end of the year. Or maybe at the end of 2019’s third quarter. But for the first half of 2019, I can certainly review my walking.

I started 2019 with a goal of walking an average of 10,000 steps each day. As of the time I am writing this (July 23, 2019), I have walked an average of 11,030 steps each day. I am well on my way to logging over 3.65 million steps this year!

Let’s look at my monthly averages for the first six months:

• January: 11,580 steps/day
• February: 10,104 steps/day
• March: 11,099 steps/day
• April: 11,461 steps/day
• May: 11,195 steps/day
• June: 11,196 steps/day

January was my best month and then I took a bit of a dive for my worst month in February. This makes sense. I was in good health in January. It rained a lot, but I was committed to going to the mall to make sure I got my steps. In February, I had some health issues (a bad cold, bad shoulder, another bad cold, insomnia, more shoulder pain) and we had a ton of rain. But I still got my steps! Things improved drastically in March once I went back on Mirtazipane to counter my insomnia. Sleep is definitely a cornerstone of my health.

Now let’s take a look at my weekly averages. I’m curious as to my best/worst weeks!

• My best week was the week of March 24-30. I averaged 12,412 steps/day. I would not have guessed! That was the first week Julian’s preschool had to shut down after asbestos contamination and his babysitter was out of town. With zero childcare and a 3.5 year old who dislikes the stroller, I really had to hustle to get those steps. Maybe the difficulty of getting my steps inspired me to work extra hard?
• My second to worst week was February 12-23, when I was struggling with insomnia and a bum shoulder. I only averaged 7,316 steps/day.
• But my most abysmal week was June 30-July 6, when I averaged 6,994/steps day. That was the week of our Nebraska trip, and the conditions were not conducive to walking. It was hot and humid and we spent a lot of time in the car. Oh well! When we go to Nebraska next summer, I’ll challenge myself to break through the 7,000 steps/day mark.

And just to satisfy my own curiosity, I scrolled through my Fitbit data for my best and worst days of the first half of 2019.

• Best day: May 3: 22,759 – Family trip to Disneyland!
• Worst day: May 25: 1,263. Wow! I remember that day well. It was a Saturday and I had a cold and was ridiculously fatigued. Nathan was supposed to go to the race track but ended up watching the kids all day while I napped. All my steps were logged either going to the bathroom or shuffling to the kitchen to get a little food.
• I love that I had my best and worst days during the same month. They cancelled each other out.

Reviewing my steps made for an extremely satisfying twenty minutes! I wonder if I can beat the day I got 22,759 steps? Without a trip to Disneyland? Or do I need the motivation of Space Mountain to walk that much? Can I break the 12,000 mark for a monthly average? Can I break the 13,000 mark for a weekly average?

I want to continue working toward 3.65 million steps for 2019 BUT I also want to start doing hot yoga when the kids go back to school. I could walk and do hot yoga on the same day, but I still need time for writing, errands, and appointments. I shall have to pay attention and be curious about what works best for me. After all, I have been walking toward my goal 3.65 million steps to improve my fitness and health; but iff hot yoga makes me even healthier, I do not want to let a goal I made at the beginning of the year get in the way of my progress toward being a healthy and fit bad ass.

As I wrote in my last post, I have ditched my goal to lose 100 pounds. Instead, I am determined to become a person who is healthy and fit.

James Clear’s book Atomic Habits has become my self-care bible. Clear advocates a two-step process for identity change. The first step is to decide the type of person you want to be. Check! I want to be a person who is healthy and fit. The more I think about this identity change, the more I love it. For the past twenty-five years, I’ve almost always had a weight loss goal. Sometimes it was just a few pounds. More recently, it was a big whooping 100. But my weight loss goals were never accompanied by an identity change. I didn’t even think about my identity! But if I had, I would have identified as “a fat person who needs to lose weight.”

Do you see the problem with this?

I thought of myself as a fat person who needed to lose weight. How could I effectively lose weight with that sort of identity? It was a self-defeating prophecy that undermined any attempts to lose weight. Being fat and needing to lose weight were programmed into my identity. Before I had even finished losing the weight, I already assumed I’d gain it and have to lose it all over again.

Not this time! I am no longer a fat person who needs to lose weight. I don’t want to indulge in that sort of cruel self-loathing anymore. I want to love myself, and it is much more loving and compassionate to think of myself as a person who is fit and healthy.

So I have adopted my new identity. I am a healthy and fit person. Now what?

According to Atomic Habits, I need to prove this new identity to myself with small wins. I get to do that by adopting small habits that will help me fortify my new identity.

James Clear writes extensively about the science of habits and behavior change. It’s great. I highly recommend Atomic Habits to anyone interested in self-care and self-improvement. That said, I’m not going to summarize al the science of habits and behavior for you because Clear has already done that in his book. Buy the book.

But selfishly, I am going to blog about my work to integrate Clear’s methods into my life because writing helps me rewire my brain.

Clear recommends creating a Habits Scorecard (which is just a fancy way to say “make a list of your daily habits”). The Habits Scorecard helps you become aware of your habits because it’s very easy to be oblivious to the things you are actually doing every day. After listing your habits, you can also rate them to see if they are actually serving or undermining your identity.

Without further adieu, here is my first attempt at a Habit Tracker! I just listed everything I did on Monday, July 15, 2019 in my Bullet Journal.

• Wake up 6:45 (I have been waking up without an alarm over the summer and it’s a wonderful luxury. But in a few weeks, I’ll need to get back into the habit of setting an alarm so I can get the kids ready for school without rushing.)
• Get out of bed.
• Take the medicine I take for my thyroid.
• Bathroom. Read book in bathroom.
• Kids wake up so I get them apple juice in their sippy cups and pour myself some Diet Coke.
• We snuggle and I read the kids a long picture book about manatees.
• While kids play, I did an episode of Classical Stretch, a 22 minute stretching program I record off PBS. I try to do Classical Stretch as often as possible but it is not a morning habit. I don’t have a set time to do it. I think it would be great if I could find a set time to stretch, but life with kids can be unpredictable, so some flexibility is great here as well.
• Make scrambled eggs and do Duolingo (I’m learning French!) while eggs cook.
• Eat and read Atomic Habits. (I like to read non-fiction with breakfast.)
• Babysitter arrives. I shower and get ready while Pippa gets dressed.
• I use my Morning Checklist to make sure we have done everything we need to do (brush teeth, hair, etc.) (I’d like to post more about this later because my checklists are AWESOME.)
• Hugs and kisses for Julian.
• Drive Pippa to camp.
• Drop Pippa at camp.
• Drive to neighborhood near my psychiatrist’s office.
• Park.
• Change into sneakers.
• Take 40 minute walk.
• Repark car.
• Change back into my Birkenstocks, grab backpack with laptop and journal, walk to nearby cafe.
• Order drink.
• Put on White Noise App on my iPhone.
• Headphones.
• Start journaling.
• Text my cousin, my dad, my brother.
• Pull out laptop.
• Write blog post in Word.
• Reread and revise Blog post.
• Check email.
• Bathroom break/play Fruit Ninja on phone/and a word game. Note to self: this is disgusting. Stop bringing phone into bathroom!
• Return to cafe table. Work on Fantasy Series.
• Finish Fantasy Series work.
• Walk to salad place.
• Order Happy Vegan plate.
• (I’m not a vegan!)
• Work on Fantasy Series while eating. Note: I don’t usually write while eating, but I was setting up an outline on index cards and was bursting with ideas.
• Bathroom break. I take lots of bathroom breaks.
• Ride elevator to psychiatrist’s office.
• Appointment with psychiatrist. We decide to continue my low dose of mirtazipane since I seem to need it to sleep. We schedule follow-up in three months.
• Walk down stairs to lobby.
• Walk to another coffee shop.
• Order iced decaf americano.
• Bathroom break, duh.
• Take coffee upstairs, sit down, activate white noise app.
• Resume work on fantasy novel.
• My god, this Habit Tracker is tedious.
• Get text. Check text. Check email. Facebook. Fuck. Turn off notifications and get back to Fantasy Series.
• Finish drafting two chapters (yes!) and quickly write a few ideas for next chapter.
• Close laptop and pack up.
• Turn iPhone devil notifications back on.
• Bathroom break, duh.
• Walk to car.
• Check Fitbit.
• Drive to get Pippa from camp.
• Listen to podcast in car.
• Park and do work in car while camp finishes.
• Pick up Pippa.
• Head off for mommy-daughter date. We got her ice cream at Rite-Aid (Diet Coke for me) and then went to Chuck E. Cheese.
• ATM.
• Go home. Pay babysitter. Hug Julian.
• Go on to late afternoon auto-pilot using my laminated checklist that is posted to the fridge: pack camp lunches, water plants, make ice, etc.
• Feed kids dinner.
• Prep steaks and carrots for my dinner with Nathan.
• When Nathan gets home, I take a 10 minute walk outside to make sure I’m over 10,000 steps for the day.
• Dinner.
• Dishes.
• This list is sooooo loooooong.
• Kids’ bedtime ritual which is filled with habits – teeth brushing, wrangling, snuggling, piggy back rides by Nathan, and so on.
• Watch Big Brother with Nathan while playing video games on phone.
• Eat popcorn during Big Brother.
• Wash up.
• Take Mirtazipane.
• Read novel in bed. (The Nightingale.)
• Sleep.

WHEW. I hope no one out there actually read that whole list. I don’t even want to reread this post. But the Habit Tracker was a good lesson in self-awareness and paying attention to the way I live my life.

On the writing front, I think I have some good habits that help me stay productive while being a stay-at-home mom. On the healthy and fit front, I have the beginning of some good habits. I’ve been walking a ton since the beginning of the year, and that is fantastic. But I’m going to have to pay attention and find new ways to build healthier habits.

My apologies if you read this whole post BUT if you want to change your habits, I do recommend the Habit Tracker. It help me pay attention and start seeing the places where I can add healthy habit. I’m trying it again today! But methinks I’ll blog about different things in the future…

As I mentioned in my last two posts, I have been slowly reading Atomic Habits by James Clear over the past week. I am about three quarters finished and already feel like it is helping me become a better person.

Some people smoke. Others drink too much. My problem is food. Since adolescence, I have struggled with eating well and maintaining a healthy weight. When I bought Atomic Habits, I was hoping it would help me lose weight.

Last year, I lost about 45 pounds. I started 2019 wanting to lose fifty-five more. (I told you that I struggle with my weight!) But instead of losing weight, I stalled and hit a plateau for the first three months of the year. Then Julian’s preschool broke (asbestos), our whole schedule was thrown into chaos, and oops, I spent the next 12 weeks gaining twelve pounds.

It’s time to get back on track.

But first, Atomic Habits has convinced me that it’s not enough to have a weight loss goal. James Clear writes:

Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. That’s the counterintuitive thing about improvement. We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results. When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. 

Atomic Habits, pg. 25.

Forehead smack! Talk about a revelation. I have been losing weight for over twenty years. I am actually very good at losing weight. But I have also been regaining the same weight, again and again and again, for over twenty years.

Every time I have lost weight, I had a goal. In high school, the goals were modest: lose ten pounds; lose fifteen pounds. In college, they were a bit more grandiose: lose forty pounds; lose forty-five pounds. Now, at the age of forty, after two pregnancies, and over six years as a stay-at-home mom, I am chipping away at a goal to lose one hundred pounds.

One. Hundred. Pounds.

Can I get an “Ugh”?

I am ready to break the cycle. I don’t want to finish losing one hundred pounds and then have the weight creep back. It’s not healthy. It’s not who I want to be. A weight loss goal is clearly not helping me become my best self.

I need to stop fixating on the weight loss goal and create a system that actually works. I have tried so many diets, from special shakes to low-carb regimens to Weightwatchers, and each diet helped me lose weight. But I’m not going to keep drinking shakes every day for the rest of my life and I’m certainly not going to keep attending Weightwatchers meetings. Been there, done that, doesn’t work for me. I need to find a way of eating and exercising that helps me be healthy for the rest of my life. I have to stop focusing on the goal of hitting a certain weight and trust that if I eat and exercise in a healthy and reasonable way, my body will become fit and healthy in the way that works for me.

Instead of worrying about my goal weight, I want to focus on my identity. As Clear says,

The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.

Atomic Habits, pg. 33.

Yes! When I read this, I could not grab my highlighter fast enough. (I am highlighting the shit out of this book. And writing tons of thoughts in the margins. I am a firm believer in reading with highlighter and pen at the ready.)

Clear provides a two-step process to change one’s identity: (1) decide on the type of person that you want to be; and (2) prove that you are that type of person with small wins.

For the past week, I have been pondering the question of who I want to be. Here is what I have so far:

• I want to be healthy and fit.
• I want to be a writer.
• I want to be the best mother than I can be.

There are other aspects of my identity that I would like to cultivate. For example, I want to do more gardening and crafting. But as a stay-at-home mom, there is only so much I can do. Long term, I can indeed eventually be a person who sews her own wardrobe and makes handmade gifts for the holidays. But in this season of my life, I get to spend a lot of time with my children and deepen our bond as much as possible.

Over the past few years, I have done a lot of writing and mothering. I published my memoir! I write almost every day! I have started writing a fantasy series! Do I identify as a writer? Hell yes. Is there more I can do toward embracing my identity as a writer? Of course. I would like to blog regularly and eventually find some writer friends; but in the current season of my life, I feel secure in my identity as a writer.

I think I’m also a pretty damn good mother to my kids. Am I perfect? Hell no. Am I working toward being the best mom that I can be? Yes! I read lots of parenting books and often reflect on motherhood in my journal. I talk about motherhood with my mom friends and therapist. Would blogging about motherhood help me improve on this front? Yes. But again, in the current season of my life, I’m doing a good job of being a mother and working toward being the best mom possible. (Not perfect. Not someone else’s version of “best.” Just the best mom that I can be to my kids.)

Now, here’s the part of my identity that needs work: I want to be healthy and fit. For me, the word “healthy” encompasses mental, emotional, spiritual and physical well-being. I have been earning top marks in the mental and emotional health department ever since I had postpartum depression. My spiritual health has also been improving (though I would like to meditate more). But my physical health? That could use some tender loving care.

I want to be healthy and fit. From here on out, I am ditching the weight loss goals. They don’t work for me. Instead, I am embracing my new identity. I don’t just want to be healthy and fit. I am healthy and fit.

Next up: I need to prove to myself that I am a healthy and fit writer and mama bear by accumulating small wins on that front. Lucky for me, Atomic Habits has shown me dozens of ways to do just that.

Since my post yesterday, I have read another seventy pages of Atomic Habits. I am learning so much about how to build better habits and dismantle the habits that no longer serve me. I want to write about everything I am reading so that I don’t just learn it for a few weeks and then move on to the next self-help book. If I write about the things I am learning, and how I am applying them in my life, then I can effectively rewire my brain. I won’t just chew over these ideas for a few weeks. I’ll absorb them and let them change me for the rest of my life.

Before I bought this book (I heard about it on the Awesome With Alison podcast), I was trying to lose weight. I am always trying to lose weight. A few times in my life, I have lost all the weight. Then, for a few months, I struggle to stay at my ideal weight. But since about the time I was fifteen years old, I have mostly been in a state of trying to lose weight.

For my latest weight loss effort, I decided it was time to address my emotional eating. This was not a bad idea. I know everything about nutrition and exercise but over the years, I have gained a lot of weight thanks to emotional eating. But since having postpartum depression in 2013, I have been working at becoming more comfortable with my feelings. And I have become a lot better at feeling my feelings.

But I am still eating too much.

The past few months, I have journaled about my eating habits. I have delved into what I thought might be the emotional and spiritual reasons behind my excessive weight. I had a lot of good ideas, but not a lot of progress. Then, at the end of a recent session, my therapist asked me to pay attention to my eating triggers.

I started to pay attention and took notes on my iPhone throughout the day. What were my eating triggers? I assumed I would make all sorts of connections between “feelings” and “food.” Stressed? Grab some crackers. Sad? Gobble some chocolate. Lonely? Hello, ice cream, let’s be friends.

But as I got curious about my eating triggers and paid attention, I noticed that I did not really have any triggers. Every now and then, I’d have some intense difficult feeling and head for the kitchen; but mostly, I ate because why not. In the kitchen? Eat. Making the kids’ lunches for tomorrow? Eat. Sitting on the couch watching television? Eat.

In other words: I used to eat to suppress uncomfortable feelings; now I let myself feel all my feelings; but I am still eating too much because that is what my body is trained to do.

A few weeks ago, after doing lots of thinking and writing about my eating habits, I started to wonder if maybe I was assigning too much meaning to my bad food habits. I was writing and journaling as if my food habits signified a spiritual crisis. But maybe my bad food habits just signified bad food habits.

When Alison mentioned Atomic Habits on a recent podcast episode, I knew I had to order that book. I wanted it right away, but we were actually leaving for Nebraska. So I put the book in my Amazon cart and ordered it the day before we flew home. It was waiting for me in California as we pulled into our driveway.

The first 130 pages have confirmed what I was starting to suspect: my bad eating habits do not result from some moral or character weakness. As Clear writes:

If you’re overweight, a smoker or an addict, you’ve been told your entire life that it is because you lack self-control–maybe even that you’re a bad person. The idea that a little discipline would solve all our problems is deeply embedded in our culture.

Atomic Habits, p. 92.

I don’t need to address some spiritual failing to become a healthier person. I’m on a spiritual journey, and I intend to be on a spiritual journey for the rest of my life; but I don’t need to stay overweight as some sort of punishment or motivation. I just have to change my habits to become a healthier person.

The past few months have been difficult.

I have done my best to stay upbeat. Freshman year of college, I took Introduction to Psychology and over twenty years later, I still remember reading in my textbook that a smile makes you feel better. I still remember that moment, slouching against a wall in my dormitory, that I smiled experimentally and realized the shift in muscles actually did make me feel a little happier. And since that moment in the hallway of my dormitory, I have found that actions like smiling make me feel better while things like complaining make me feel worse.

Still, sometimes I need to take stock and be realistic about my life. Sometimes, complaining is not actually complaining but being honest with oneself. As much as I would rather focus on the ways that I am blessed, right now I need to acknowledge the challenges of the past few months.

In mid-March, both my kids had a week of spring break. On the day they were supposed to go back to school, Pippa was sick. She had been fighting a fever all of spring break and had already seen the doctor twice. That first Monday after spring break, I planned to take Julian to school and then call Pippa’s doctor.

Life had other plans.

As we drove up the hill toward Julian’s preschool, my phone rang. I answered. It was a preschool teacher. She told me that there was no school that day. This took me a moment to process. I actually wondered if I had somehow gotten confused about when spring break was over, and if the teachers somehow were psychic and knew I was taking Julian to an empty campus… Then the teacher explained a roof repair was not finished, and the director would send more information over email.

Okay. Change of plans. I called the doctor’s office and Julian tagged along to Pippa’s appointment, where we learned poor girl had a sinus infection. I took the kids to our usual pharmacy, but they did not have the medicine we needed, so I had to drag them to another pharmacy. All the time, I was wondering if Pippa would be well enough to celebrate her birthday that coming Saturday (we had already rescheduled her party once.) I remember thinking about all the curveballs of parenthood.

I didn’t realize just how big a curveball was about to be thrown at me.

Long story short, Julian’s preschool was “broken.” The roof had needed repairs over spring break. (Pasadena got a lot of rain in early 2019). The roof repairs dislodged asbestos in the ceiling. The asbestos contaminated the school. The school needed to be closed for asbestos abatement. At first, I hoped the repairs would take a few weeks. Then I hoped for two months. Surely school would reopen for camp!

Three and a half months later, school is still closed. Turns out, asbestos abatement involves more than a snap of the fingers. It actually involves stripping away dry wall, ripping away floors, and sealing everything up with plastic until the school looks a bit like that quarantine scene in E.T. (I am blatantly stealing that last analogy from another parent.) Once abatement is complete (so close, we are so close), the school will need all new floors, ceilings, and walls. We also need to buy/collect all new supplies because we had to throw away almost everything – including the books, toys, art supplies and furniture – that was exposed to contamination. This all takes time.

I have been calling this adventure Asbestos-gate, and for the past several months, I have done my best to stay upbeat and positive. At least the teachers realized the dust and tiles on the floor were a problem! And we were fixing the contamination! And I got extra time with Julian!

But honestly, Abestos-gate has been tough. At first, I thought it was tough because Absestos-gate thrust me into the Vortex of Uncertainty. This whole experience has ripped away a lot of illusions I had about the certainty of my life. I truly thought that when I enrolled Julian in preschool, he would attend for three uninterrupted years, just like his big sister Pippa had. True, we might decide to move and then need to switch preschools but that was something under my family’s control. I took preschool for granted. I assumed it would be there no matter what.

Now I have so much more empathy for people who experience a natural disaster like a hurricane or wildfire. My goodness. It has been difficult to lose our preschool, but that is all we lost. Some people lose everything at once: home; work; school; grocery store; post office; favorite coffee shop; doctor’s office; my god, everything.

Uncertainty is uncomfortable but it is one of the only givens in life. Every day is filled with little uncertainties, from how long the line will be at Starbucks to what sort of mood my kids will be in when they wake up. As preschool undergoes its necessary repairs, I have told myself that the Vortex of Uncertainty is making me a stronger and better person. This is like Boot Camp for Uncertainty. I am being conditioned with extreme uncertainty and at the end of this adventure, I’ll be better equipped to to deal with the daily uncertainties of life. Extra long line at Starbucks? No problem. At least Starbucks is functioning, and not contaminated with Starbucks. Julian wakes up with a fever? No problem. At least he can go to preschool when he feels better. My car battery is dead? Hey, that’s still easier than Asbestos-gate.

I’m glad I have been focusing on the positives, but yesterday, I realized that I have been so focused on the Vortex of Uncertainty, I did not appreciate the havoc that Asbestos-gate has wrecked on my habits. On one level, I knew that Asbestos-gate had interrupted my routines. Duh. But I thought I was just getting some good practice at flexibility. I did not stop and acknowledge just how shocking it can be to have one’s habits up-ended.

Yesterday I started reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. I am only sixty pages in, but I can already tell this book is going to help me make some big life changes.

When I think about habits, I don’t usually get excited. My habits are pretty boring – brushing teeth, getting dressed, putting my iPhone in my tote bag before leaving the house … But the first sixty pages of Atomic Habits have already convinced me that habits are a vital part of my life. Habits are not just the little boring things we do every day. Habits create our identity! Clear says it perfectly: “[T]he process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself.”

As he further explains:

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it actually is big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.

James Clear, Atomic Habits at 38.

Asbestos-gate interfered with my habits. I had an entire routine that told me when I would take the kids to school, when I would walk, when I would write, and when I would volunteer in the classroom. Asbestos-gate took that away. I had to completely overhaul my schedule and figure out new ways to get time for exercise and writing.

I knew Absestos-gate had upended my habits, but I didn’t think about how that affected my identity. I am a writer and a mother. But thanks to Asbestos-gate, I lost the routine that gave me time to write every day. That undermined my identity as a writer. Asbestos-gate also interfered with my volunteer work at my kids’ schools. Obviously I could not volunteer at preschool because it was contaminated, but I also had to stop volunteering in Pippa’s classroom because I had a constant three-year-old sidekick. Yes, I still had my babysitter two times each week, but I needed those hours for appointments and writing. So my identity as a stay-at-home mother was also undermined by all the changes in my routine and habits.

I have felt a bit like I was floundering the past few months. Now I realize why: my identity has felt murky and mushy because I have been living without all my routines and habits.

Habits do not just create my identity. They also put things on auto-pilot so my brain does not have to expend too much energy making mundane daily decisions. Before Asbestos-gate, I did not have to think about where or when I was going to walk or write. I had already made those decisions, months ago, when I figured out my routine for the 2018-2019 school year. (Take Julian to preschool. Take Pippa to kindergarten. Take walk in neighborhood. Write at Starbucks.) After Asbestos-gate, I had to figure out my Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays anew every single week. Julian and I had fun, but it was a lot of work scheduling play dates and figuring out adventures that would make us both happy. Plus I had to figure out, every day, when and how I was going to move my body and get 10,000 steps. Losing my habits created more work for my brain. No wonder I have felt some extra brain fog!

I am excited to read Atomic Habits this week and think about the habits I want to cultivate in the 2019-2020 school year. I am excited to get back into a predictable routine. I am excited for new habits that will help me become the person I want to be.

I am very good at eating while doing something else. I am either eating and reading; or eating and talking to another person; or eating and watching television; or eating furtively while thinking about the fact that I should not be eating. The point is, for most of my forty years, I have managed to consume millions of calories without paying much attention to said calories. Then last month, I read How to Eat by Thich Nhat Hanh, and now I want to do a better job of staying mindful while I eat. 

How to Eat is a very short book, but it was filled with a lot of ideas that I am still processing. But one idea that I love is that before eating, we should consider all the things that made our meal possible.

For example, today I enjoyed a shrimp quesadilla for lunch. Before my first bite, I considered the quesadilla. I was about to eat shrimp – shrimp! – that not long ago, were swimming in the ocean. I imagined the fisherman who caught the shrimp.

Then, I took my first bite (#hungry) but I kept considering my food.

The shrimp was processed, packaged, transported and eventually sold to the restaurant where I am currently writing. So many people had to work in order for those half dozen shrimp to reach my plate! Then, I told the waiter I wanted the shrimp quesadilla; the waiter relayed my request to the chef; and the chef seasoned and cooked the shrimp.

And we are still just talking about the shrimp. I have not even considered the quesadilla!

It was a spinach quesadilla, so someone planted the seeds for the spinach. It being 2019, the farmer probably used a tractor. Someone built that tractor. Someone else sold it. And consider the spinach: it was not enough to plant the seed in the ground. It had to be planted in soil that was rich enough for the spinach to grow; there needed to be sunshine and water; so there must have been rain and irrigation…

And that’s just one ingredient for the tortilla! Never mind the salt and flour… or the cheese that was sprinkled inside. The olive oil that was used to marinate the shrimp. The moonbeams that touched the olives, the history of people crushing olives to make olive oil. Who was the first person that realized the oil of olives could be used for cooking?

There are so many stories wrapped in every single ingredient that were used to make my lunch. It’s so incredible to ponder how those stories intersect in a single plate. And I could have just mindlessly devoured my lunch, not really tasting the shrimp, or appreciating the gooey texture of cheese…

The whole world – rain, sunshine, ocean, soil – worked to give me this one meal.

I know I am busy raising children. I know there is not enough time for all the things I want/need to do. But today, this is my prayer for myself: that I find the time to sit and truly appreciate the food I consume and let eating become a mindfulness practice for my heart, body, mind and soul.